Tetra Discovery Partners Raises Financing

TETRA DISCOVERY PARTNERS LLC LOGOTetra Discovery Partners, a Grand Rapids, Michigan-based drug discovery company developing a portfolio of drugs for psychiatric, neurological and inflammatory diseases, raised an additional financing of undisclosed amount.

Backers included previous seed investor Grand Angels and Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation.

The company intends to use the funds to support additional work aimed at the filing of its first Investigational New Drug (IND) application for cognition drug candidate in 2015.

Led by Mark Gurney, Ph.D., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Tetra Discovery Partners uses structure‑guided drug design to discover mechanistically novel, allosteric inhibitors of phosphodiesterase 4 (PDE4). The company’s research focuses on developing new treatments for cognitive impairment in schizophrenia, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease and traumatic brain injury (TBI). It is also a recipient of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Blueprint Neurotherapeutics Network cooperative research agreement, a $50 million program across 15 NIH Institutes and Centers.

Tetra, which maintains a business office in the Cambridge Innovation Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, also announced the formation of its Scientific Advisory Board, comprised of:
– Catherine D. Strader, Ph.D., Founding Partner, Synergy Partners, R&D Solutions, LLC and former Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer, Schering-Plough and Vice President and Site Head, Merck Research Laboratories
– Scott A. Reines, M.D., Ph.D., former Senior Vice President, Central Nervous System, Pain and Translational Medicine, Janssen Research & Development, LLC
– James S. MacDonald, Ph.D., Founding Partner, Synergy Partners, R&D Solutions, LLC and former Executive Vice President, Preclinical Development, Schering Plough Research Institute, and
Jeffrey S. Nye, M.D., Ph.D., Vice President Neuroscience Innovation and Scientific Partnership Strategy, Janssen Research and Development, LLC, Johnson & Johnson Innovation, former Chief Medical Officer of Research and Early Development at Janssen.

FinSMEs

16/10/2014

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